Melbourne Marathon Opens a Review After Its Own Race Vehicle Hit a Runner

The Melbourne Marathon is conducting a full review of Sunday’s race after one of its official vehicles struck a participant at Albert Park. In a statement to The Age, the race confirmed the vehicle was its own. The runner, a woman in her 30s, faces surgery and weeks of recovery, according to a doctor who was in the race and stopped to help her.

“Sorry @melbmara but we need to make the course safer. Can’t have this again,” Nathan Warner, a Tasmanian doctor, wrote on Instagram after the race, tagging the organizers. Warner reached the injured woman shortly after the collision, and as he was with her, a motorcycle on event duty struck him in the back and rode on. “It actually knocked me over almost down onto the patient,” he told The Age. “And they didn’t even stop, they just continued on.”

Warner was unhurt, and once he had crossed the line he told race officials about the motorcycle. The woman was seen first by St John Ambulance, which ran medical support on the course, and then taken to hospital.

Speaking to the radio station 3AW, a runner identified only as Mark said he saw a runner hit at Albert Park while he was inside the last six kilometers of the marathon. “The bikes sped past with their horns on, but then the cars just ploughed, and there wasn’t enough room for the slower marathon runners and the fast pace car, and the pace car just hit one of the marathon runners,” he said. Whether Mark and Warner were describing the same incident has not been established.

The Age reported that the collision happened at around the same time as the Flinders Street incident, roughly four hours after the 6:15 a.m. marathon start. The marathon field was capped at 20,000 this year, up from 14,000, after more than 52,000 people entered the ballot. It was also the day Eliud Kipchoge won in a course record of 2:09:10.

Vehicles on closed courses have hurt runners at other big races. At the Fukuoka International Marathon in December 2023, a runner hit by a race vehicle near 32K finished with a fractured elbow, and organizers apologized. And just eight days before Melbourne, two runners were injured at the Kuala Lumpur Marathon when, police say, a motorcyclist rode into a closed section of the course against the flow of traffic.

Runners Report Water Shortages

Some runners also complained to The Age about water. By the time Isabelle Batty, a first-time half-marathoner who had also come over from Tasmania, reached the aid stations at Albert Park Lake, she said, they were dry. “People were lining up with cups and attempted to lift the giant water containers to get the last dribbles of water,” she said. “All of a sudden there were lots of medics on bicycles everywhere, and people lying along the grass with feet in the air and receiving attention.”

The race’s own course guide lists 12 aid stations on the marathon route, plus one at the finish.

Teen Charged After Stolen Car Hits a Pedestrian Near the Course

Police allege that a 16-year-old boy, driving a Ford Escape taken hours earlier from a business in Cranbourne South, hit a 57-year-old pedestrian at Flinders and Elizabeth streets at about 10:45 a.m., according to Australian Associated Press. Police say he had driven along the Flinders Street tram tracks.

Officers on patrol at Flinders Street Station, protective services officers among them, drew their weapons as the car swung around in front of the station. From there, police say, the boy drove down Flinders Lane and damaged several parked cars. The marathon passed the station at the Swanston Street end, and witnesses told the ABC the car got within meters of the runners. No runners were reported hurt by it.

“Bystanders had to actually drag the injured person off the road so that they wouldn’t be hit again because this guy was not slowing down,” Kirk Pearson, who owns a coffee shop nearby, told the Herald Sun. Ambulance Victoria took the woman to Royal Melbourne Hospital with non-life-threatening injuries to her upper body. Police later arrested the boy in Albert Park and say there was no terrorist motive and no intended target.

He appeared in a children’s court on Monday, where, The Age reported, he faces 10 charges. Among them are reckless conduct endangering serious injury and failing to render assistance. He did not apply for bail and is due back in court on Oct. 19.